Musings from the NAFCU CU Suite

Welcome!

Written by Anthony Demangone

As a newbie executive for the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, I learned one important thing very, very quickly.

There were a lot of important things I needed to learn.  And very, very quickly.

With that in mind, I started to read.  Books.  Magazines.  Blogs.  Newspapers.  If there was an idea on how to be a better employee, colleague, manager, or executive, I added it to my reading pile.

This blog is an attempt to share the best of my reading pile with credit union executives and managers.  Nothing more, and nothing less.  But please keep the following in mind:

• I do not pretend to be a management expert or "guru."  I just like good ideas, and I like sharing them even more.
• If you have a good idea, comment, or critique, please join the conversation. 
• I'll occasionally write about my twins, college football, and other things that consume my life. 
• If I can successfully twist some arms, my NAFCU colleagues will share their thoughts on management, leadership, and the like. 

If this sounds like your cup of tea...

1. Consider registering to have the blog emailed to you. 
2. Or why not add this blog's "feed" to an RSS reader? This wonderful "how-to" video discusses the power of RSS feeds and how to use them.  

Below, you'll find the blog's posts, starting with the most recent.  I look forward to hearing from you, and thanks for reading.

Trust that Gut?

Written by Anthony Demangone

If any of you know me, or better yet, have seen me, you know that I have a ...how do I put this...a big gut.

Sure, I could blame the following:

• A love of micro-brewed beers.
• Exercise that has been reduced to chasing after Kate and Briggs. 
• Rooting for the Steelers, which generally means I'm attending quite a few football parties, well into the playoffs. (A pox on you, Tebow!)

But in reality, I have no one else to blame.  I eat like a middle linebacker.  I'm as tall as JV point guard. I neglected exercise.  It all adds up.   But I'm working on the issue, 30 minutes a day. 

Well, it turns out that my gut may be good for something after all.  

While this 2007 New York Times article isn't new, it stuck with me as I read it.  The article interviews the researcher whose work led to a ground-breaking book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.  His research centered on "gut instincts."  Here's a snippet of the interview with Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer.

***

Q: O.K., let’s start with basics: what is a gut feeling?

A: It’s a judgment that is fast. It comes quickly into a person’s consciousness. The person doesn’t know why they have this feeling. Yet, this is strong enough to make an individual act on it. What a gut instinct is not is a calculation. You do not fully know where it comes from.

My research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term “heuristics.” These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information.

Q: In modern society, gut thinking has a bad reputation. Why is that?

A: It is not thought to be rational. One of the founders of your country, Benjamin Franklin, suggested to his nephew that when he made important life decisions, he should do it like a bookkeeper — list all the pros and cons and then make the decision, after weighing everything. That is the classical rational approach.

Q: Some of your critics say that gut instincts just aren’t scientific. What’s your answer?

A: We study these things, where intuition is good and where it’s not. One should also not overlook that in science itself, you need intuitions. All successful research scientists function, to a degree, on gut instincts. They must make leaps, whether they have all the data or not. And at a certain moment, having the data doesn’t help them, but they still must know what to do. That’s when instinct comes in.

Q: Do you think of yourself as intuitive or rational?

A: Both. In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can’t explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That’s the science part. Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn’t do computations. Nor did she.

***

I like the last quote, as it may blend the best of the "gut instinct" with the rational world of analysis. Gut reactions, it seem, are more complicated and nuanced that many would think.  But a simple fact-check to test the gut reaction is never a bad idea.  But who cares what I think?

So I pose the question to you: Does the "gut reaction" have any place in the world of a credit union leader?

Data: Some That Shouldn't Shock Us, and Some That Might

Written by Anthony Demangone

Meetings.  (Sigh.)  We've complained about them forever. But does anything change?

Perhaps not.  At least according to this Wall Street Journal article.  The article was based on a study that tracked the days of 500 CEOs.  From the article:

In one sample of 65 CEOs, executives spent roughly 18 hours of a 55-hour workweek in meetings, more than three hours on calls and five hours in business meals, on average. Some of the remaining time was spent traveling, in personal activity, such as exercise or lunches with spouses, or in short activities, such as quick calls, that weren't recorded by CEOs' assistants. Working alone averaged just six hours weekly.  (Emphasis added.)

Whoah, Nelly!  Six hours?  I understand all too well how meetings can eat up your day.  But I was a bit shocked to learn that the average CEO's schedule includes only six hours a week for "alone" time.   My guess is that six hours is not enough.

Fred Becker, my boss, always urges me to turn off the computer, shut my door, and simply think.  On the rare occasions when I do it, it tends to work.  Over the lunch hour, recently, I dashed off to get a hair cut.  As I walked to the barber, and while I sat in the chair, my mind stumbled onto this issue: What do NAFCU's members really want from our Annual Conference? Networking?  Entertainment?  Education?  A mix?  If so, what is the right mix?  Or do you try to build numerous conference experiences within the same conference to adapt it to as many points of view as possible? 

I certainly didn't come up with any hard answers.  But "quiet time" was very useful.  And my wife likes my haircut.  But I do a terrible job of building this sort of work into my schedule.

Back to the WSJ article: it wasn't all gloom and doom.  One CEO created a system that worked for him.  He now budgets 25% of his time for thinking.  He uses his travel time (flights) and he also blocks off time on his calendar. 

How did this CEO view meetings?

"While you are sitting in a meeting, your competition is getting stuff done," he says. 

So, I pose these questions to you:

1. Do you have enough "down" time within your schedule to think? 
2. How much time do you spend in meetings?  Is that too much, too little, or not enough?

Do any of you have a system that builds in "thinking" time? And how do you manage the "meetings" beast?   Curious minds (including mine) want to know. 

Coach K and the Wizard; Shameless Plug

Written by Anthony Demangone

As the seconds ticked away during the SuperBowl...as Brady's last-gasp pass attempt bounced off the turf, a sinking feeling took hold of me, almost as soon as the confetti began to fall.

Football was done. (Sigh.)

But the meloncholy soon lifted.  I realized that March Madness was just around the corner.  Brackets. Buzzer beaters.  And very stressed men pacing back and forth near the bench.  Those would be the coaches.

As we near the frenzy of tournament basketball, I thought I 'd spend a few minutes on two of basketball's more famous leaders.  

Mike Kryzewski.  In this article (Washington Post), the author details another journal article in which Coach "K" lays out his leadership style.

1. Adjust your strategy to your team.
2. Be your best player's friend.
3. It's the leader's job to get rid of distractions.
4. Don't have rules. Have standards. 

The article fleshes out those four points.  

John Wooden.  I was going to put pen to paper on the late Coach Wooden, when I realized that I had already done so a few years ago.  Here's what I wrote back then, which I still feel rings true today. 

If you are not a sports fan, Mr. Wooden is generally regarded as the greatest college basketball coach our nation ever produced.  Some would say that he is the best coach of any category.  I've been reading quite a few stories about him.  There were times when the UCLA basketball team would come in for halftime, and Coach Wooden's entire halftime speech would center on...enthusiasm. He wouldn't talk about boxing out, or how to work on a trap.  He'd often just talk about an important quality he wanted on his team.  It could be enthusiasm, or friendship, or self-control.  Coach Wooden's thought was that if you took care of certain smaller things, success was inevitable.  He turned his thoughts into the pyramid of success.   The pyramid is made up of qualities that Wooden felt lead to greater teamwork, and ultimate success.  I don't care if it is basketball, soccer or compliance.  That chart works for me.  Perhaps it will work for you. 

***

And now, a shameless plug.

NAFCU will provide training on succession planning on Wednesday, February 22, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Those who sign up for the training event will give their credit union access to the broadcast either live, or on demand for an additional 12 months.   A few thoughts:

• NCUA expects you to have a succession plan. See chapter 7 of NCUA's examiner's guide.  Simply search for the word "succession," and you'll see what I mean. 
• NCUA's CAMEL Rating system points to succession planning. 
• All of us will eventually leave the credit union industry...one way or the other.  We owe it to our respective organizations to make sure that inevitable transition is as smooth as possible. 

You learn more about the training event, and sign up here.  

In the Age of Outrage

Here are some thoughts from my colleague, Karen.   Good stuff, people.  Good stuff. 

Written by Karen Tyson

NAFCU Senior Vice President/ Marketing and Communications

Susan G. Komen Foundation is the latest organization to backtrack on a corporate decision due to a flurry of public outrage generated through social media. Seems social media has definitely come of age, and with it, the reality that anything and everything is potential fodder for discussion and dissection by anyone willing to tweet about it or post it to Facebook. 

This 24/7 opportunistic world is the reason it is more important than ever for managers to carefully consider every decision, no matter how seemingly unimportant, and troubleshoot it for any potential pitfalls. The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been.

It’s a new world and a policy decision that makes sense in your board room, might not make sense to those outside of it—and unfortunately, the facts don’t often matter.

We don’t control the news. We don’t control the spin. The public does. They pay attention to everything—not just the things we make public through our press machines.

And once the information is out, it’s very difficult to change the message. Komen tried. But within a day they had backpedaled and reversed their initial decision. That old adage that says any news is good as long as they spell your name right isn’t true anymore.

What’s the lesson for the rest of us? Be careful and thorough. Consider all the angles and every perspective. And once you’re comfortable, make sure you are willing to stand behind your choices.  Own your decisions. Because in the end, someone isn’t going to agree with your stance and might decide to quibble with it—and that’s okay—you just have to be firmly committed to it and comfortable with whatever consequences might ensue.

Fortunately, one of the upsides of this new world is that the public’s attention span is shorter than ever—and they’ll be moving on to the next carcass—oops, story in a nanosecond.

Change Your Point of View; Mailbag

Written by Anthony Demangone, with the help of a bunch of people.

A number of my colleagues and I were in a meeting recently.  Issue du jour?  Did a third-party product make sense for NAFCU and its member credit unions?

We chatted a good deal about important issues:

• Price
• Utility, both for us, and our members
• Hidden costs, in terms of consulting and in-house staff attention

It was a good discussion.  At one point in the meeting, however, we had to ask ourselves this question: How would Fred view this from his seat?  ("Fred" is Fred Becker, NAFCU's CEO.)  Given Fred's concerns, which include balancing the budget, answering to the board, executing NAFCU's strategic plan, etc., what would he want to know?  What questions would he ask?

Based on the new point of view, it quickly became apparent that we were in no position to recommend moving forward.  We needed more data.  A good deal more.

Changing your point of view is essential.  As agents of a corporation (be it a trade association, or a credit union), we all work on behalf of someone else.  The more we can view things from their point of view, the better. 

***

I've asked for some management gems from readers, and you have responded.  Here's a few from the mailbag:

• Mission first, people always.  (Must keep priority on both …Not easy, but can be done.)
• Napoleon’s Corporal.  (Pick someone down low on the "organization chart." Have them read/listen to plans/procedures.  If he/she understands, good to go.)
• Three points of light before speaking…Is it needed?  Is it the truth?  Is it kind?
• Maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters!
• Prioritize your day in writing; items unfinished can be moved to the next appropriate date, even if it's a month away (or more).  Issues moved repeatedly into the future should be reviewed for either abandonment or possibly for reassignment to another co-worker.  This process has served me well.
• Learn the value of the unexpressed thought.  Listen more, talk less.  Let others come up with the idea that you thought of twenty minutes ago, but you had the foresight to keep quiet and let them figure it out for themselves.

And finally, this gem, reportedly from Will Rogers:

• "There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

And with that, my good friends, have a great weekend! 

Watch out for that monkey...

Written by Anthony Demangone

Somewhere, within NAFCU's halls, Fred Becker is smiling.  Because this management article (Harvard Business Review) might just be his favorite.  If you don't want to spring for the purchase, the authors also wrote this magazine article (Bloomberg Business Week) based on the original. 

In short, within any organizations, there are problems.  It could be a thorny decision. Or how to properly launch of a new product or service.  In the article, the authors describe problems or projects as "monkeys."  Most organizations have quite a few monkeys, it would seem.  NAFCU surely does.  I'd be surprised if your credit union doesn't have a few as well. 

Too many managers, the article argues, allow monkeys that belong to subordinates, to leap onto their desks.  The subordinate's problem is now their problem. 

You're racing down the hall. An employee stops you and says, "We've got a problem." You assume you should get involved but can't make an on-the-spot decision. You say, "Let me think about it."

You've just allowed a "monkey" to leap from your subordinate's back to yours. You're now working for your subordinate. Take on enough monkeys, and you won't have time to handle your real job: fulfilling your own boss's mandates and helping peers generate business results.

How do you return the monkeys to their rightful owners?  The magazine article shows you how.   

Now, not all monkeys are bad.  Here's a picture of one of my favorites.  

Have a great week, guys!

What Not To Do; This and That

Written by Anthony Demangone

There are many ways to learn management skills.   But I'd put them into two separate camps.  Positive and Negative. 

Positive.  You can read about good leaders.  You can study management texts.  You can ask for advice from leaders that you respect.  You can add expertise and skills that only experience provides. 

Negative.  You'll make mistakes. Learn from them.  Better yet, why not learn from others?

Today, I'll focus a bit on the negative.  Here's a great article (Forbes) that lists seven awful traits of poor executives.  Here's a snippet:

Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers

Here’s the image of executive competence that we’ve been taught to admire for decades: a dynamic leader making a dozen decisions a minute, dealing with many crises simultaneously, and taking only seconds to size up situations that have stumped everyone else for days. The problem with this picture is that it’s a fraud. Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel they have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning new ones.

CEO Wolfgang Schmitt of Rubbermaid was fond of demonstrating his ability to sort out difficult issues in a flash. A former colleague remembers that under Schmitt,” the   joke   went, ‘Wolf  knows everything about everything.’  In one discussion, where we were talking about a particularly complex acquisition we made in Europe, Wolf, without hearing different points of view, just said, ‘Well, this is what we are going to do.’”  Leaders who need to have all the answers shut out other points of view. When your company or organization is run by someone like this, you’d better hope the answers he comes up with are going to be the right ones.  At Rubbermaid they weren’t.  The company went from being Fortune’s most admired company in America in1993 to being acquired by the conglomerate Newell a few years later.

That's a great point.  A few of my colleagues at NAFCU have given me fantastic advice along these lines, but in a positive way.  Never be afraid of hiring folks that are smarter than you.  In fact, always try to do so. They'll provide your solutions and answers. 

Personally, on the occasions when I've stepped into a managerial gopher hole, it resulted from not consulted with enough folks around me. 

***

Here are a few interesting reads...

• Marc Cuban's 12 rules for start ups. (Entrepreneur.com)
• One person's take on the best leadership traits of the GOP presidential candiates. (WashingtonPost.com)
• A simple story of innovation, involving a van.

 Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

100 Rules?

Written by Anthony Demangone

I enjoy hearing from successful people, no matter the industry.  I've found that habits or traits that lead to success in one area, often translate into success in others.  

Recently, I stumbled upon this blog post that lays out 100 rules for being an entrepreneur.  (The Altucher Confidential)  Yes, that's right.  A hundred.

My brother-in-law is an entrepreneur, and I can tell you that his mind works a wee bit differently from mine.  He sees solutions to problems, and then quickly determines whether that idea is worthy of production.  I just don't connect the dots like an entrepreneur.  

But reading this list of "rules," it turns out that much of the success just boils down to hard work and dogged determination.  Not every rule here applies to credit unions, or even trade associations. But I thoroughly enjoyed the read.  Here are a few gems from the list:

Communicate with everyone. Employees. Customers. Investors. All the time. Every day.

Do everything for your customers. This is very important. Get them girlfriends or boyfriends. Speak at their charities. Visit their parents for Thanksgiving. Help them find other firms to meet their needs. Even introduce them to your competitors if you think a competitor can help them or if you think you are about to be fired. Always think first, “What’s going to make my customer happy?”

Give employees structure. Let each employee know how his or her path to success can be achieved. All of them will either leave you or replace you eventually. That’s OK. Give them the guidelines how that might happen. Tell them how they can get rich by working for you.

Understand the demographic changes that are changing the world. Where are marketing dollars flowing and can you be in the middle. What services do aging baby boomers need? Is the world running out of clean water? Are newspapers going to survive? Etc. Etc. Read every day to understand what is going on.

Always take someone with you to a meeting. You’re bad at following up. Because you have no free time. So, if you have another employee. Let them follow up. Plus, they will like to spend time with the boss. You’re going to be a mentor.

I could go on, but I'll leave the rest to you. But, I'm curious.  What are some of the rules that led to your success? Curious minds want to know.  Including mine.  If you have a gem, please leave a comment or shoot me a note. 

Have a great week, folks. 

A Few Counter-intuitive Points of View; Spaceships

Written by Anthony Demangone

Some of the best advice can seem, at some level, counter-intuitive.

To be a good soldier, you must love the army.  To be a good commander, you must be able to order the death of the thing you love.
    - General Robert Lee 

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. 
    - Dale Carnegie

And the immortal advice that entered my life in 1985... 

If you love someone, set them free.
    - Sting

Well, I've seen a few examples of counter-intuitive advice lately along the lines of productivity and management.

• Lots of folks think that if you just work smart enough and long enough, you'll catch up.  No, no you will not, argues Peter Bregman of the Harvard Business Review.  From his post:

The idea that we can get it all done is the biggest myth in time management. There's no way Brad can meaningfully go through all his email and there's no way any of us are going to accomplish everything we want to get done.

Face it: You're a limited resource.

Each day only has 24 hours and we can't sustainably work through all of them.
On the one hand, that's depressing. On the other hand, acknowledging it can be tremendously empowering. Once we admit that we aren't going to get it all done, we're in a much better position to make explicit choices about what we are going to do. Instead of letting things haphazardly fall through the cracks, we can intentionally push the unimportant things aside and focus our energy on the things that matter most.

• To do lists?  Scrap them, says Daniel Markovitz, also of the Harvard Business Review.   From his post:

Stop making to-do lists. They're simply setting you up for failure and frustration. Consider the to-do lists you're currently managing: how many items have been languishing since Michelle Bachman was leading the field for the Republican nomination? How often do you scan your list just so that you can pick off the ones you can finish in two minutes? How many items aren't really to-dos at all, but rather serious projects that require significant planning? 

• Lead by silence.  That's a tip from NAFCU's Alicia Hosmer, who heads up our stellar marketing efforts.  

I also try to keep quiet more now that I’m a “boss.” I may have an idea or think I know an answer to something in a meeting, but giving others time and space to figure it out or draw their own conclusions helps with their critical thinking development – especially for some of the greener staff. 

I learn a lot from Alicia.  You could as well.  Here's a post she wrote for the NAFCU Services Blog, where Alicia wants to know whether you are "denting" the universe. 

• Finally, Michael Schrange has a tip for getting more organized.  Don't do it.   His point?

The essential takeaway is that the new economics of personal productivity mean that the better organized we try to become, the more wasteful and inefficient we become. We'll likely get more done better if we give less time and thought to organization and greater reflection and care to desired outcomes. Our job today and tomorrow isn't to organize ourselves better; it's to get the right technologies that respond to our personal productivity needs. It's not that we're becoming too dependent on our technologies to organize us; it's that we haven't become dependent enough.

 Any tips to share?  I'd love to hear them. 

***

My kids love when we drive around in the evening.  They love spotting airplanes, trucks, police cars...you name it. We recently drove into DC, and Kate spotted the Washington Monument for the first time at night.

Kate: Daddy - look!  A spaceship.
Dad:  Why yes.  Yes it is.  

Here's a recent picture of my future astronaut.  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Penn State, Paterno, and Leadership

Written by Anthony Demangone

If you know me or read any of my blog posts during the past five years, you'll know that I'm a proud graduate of the Pennsylvania State University.  Following the events of the past several months, quite a few of you have asked me about my thoughts and feelings.  

This isn't the place for me to share my emotions, which run deep, and in several directions.  It is hard to describe how integrated Penn State is to the lives of many Pennsylvanians.  Both of my brothers went to Penn State. A sister-in-law went there.  As did my Godfather. My father-in-law. My mother-in-law. And my wife.  Countless friends studied there with me or my wife, or work there now.   So, if you don't mind, I'll leave the emotions to another post, which may or may not be written. 

But in light of this blog and its direction, here are some thoughts.

Reputation.  It is impossible to underscore how important reputation is today, given the speed of information.  Decisions, which might have been final in the past, now can rise again and gain new life.  A news article or Twitter post can end careers in the blink of an eye. 

Succession planning.  I wonder how many boards plan for a Penn State-like situation.  A scandal rocks your organization.  And every person who touched the situation, including the president, is gone in an instant.  Who speaks for the organization?  How do you build back those pieces, when everyone who would have been involved is now gone?  Penn State stumbled quite a few times in the process.  Would your organization have done better?  

Communication.  During the process, officials seemed to make many mistakes.  To me, the public wanted to hear the following: "We are horrified by the allegations of what happened at Penn State.  We will not rest until the truth is known, and we'll need the help of many people and organizations to get to that truth.  Penn State will cooperate fully with law enforcement officials, and we will share what we learn with the public."  But that message didn't get out until later, and I wonder why.  The board of trustees had a very tough job.  The coach, athletic director, another senior executive, and the president were gone, and the press gathered quickly.  How would you handle communications in such a situation? 

Stewardship.  The Penn State scandal underscored a good lesson. Whether we like it or not, leaders are stewards.  The organizations we touch mean something to other people.  When we damage our organization, the ripples of our actions spread far and wide.  Probably further than we would think possible.  When tough decisions involve colleagues or friends, it gets complicated. Or does it?  How would you handled things, had you been in their shoes? 

Coach Paterno. As for JoePa, we'll never know his role in this affair with any certainty.  But I'm glad he was Penn State's coach.  That doesn't mean I don't feel for the victim of Sandusky's alleged actions.  I'm sure if Joe could turn back time, he'd do things differently.  All of us likely would regarding some chapter of our lives.  Joe wasn't perfect.  I can be thankful for what he did, while still acknowledging that he could have done more regarding this scandal.  

What does Joe mean to me?  This story sums it up.

When I was a senior, in the Spring of 1995, I was entering Pattee Library with a friend.  Coach Paterno was just standing there, waiting for someone.  I swallowed hard, and approached him. I thanked him for being Penn State's coach, and for making us proud.  (The 12-0 season we just finished sure didn't hurt.)  I shook his hand, and then turned to walk away. 

Not so fast, he said.  Joe spent 15 minutes with me and my friend.  What were our majors?  Our grades? What was my hometown?  (He knew my high school football coach.) I told him I was entering journalism, and he congratulated me.  Working with our English language is a privilege, he said. And I'd be paid to do it. (That shouldn't be shocking. He graduated from Brown with a degree in English.)  He wished me well, asking me to make him proud. Eventually, someone came up the steps and whisked Joe away.

I floated down those steps.  And I can still remember everything about that conversation.  I've thought about it quite a bit this past weekend. 

That's what Joe means to me.  No matter what came later, or before - on that day, Joe chose to touch my life.  No matter what came later, or before that day, that was leadership.

I'll miss you, coach. 

 (AP Photo, Pat Little.)